Civic Center Park in Denver, shown during a 4/20 event in April 2012. (Denver Post file)

Denver parks officials have denied a permit for a 4/20 rally to an organizer who had been given first consideration for Civic Center on April 20. Now the city is working out details with a second applicant who had been shut out.

The latest twist comes five weeks after first applicant Robert Chase told Denver Parks and Recreation that he would not provide requested details about portable toilets, emergency medical arrangements, crowd monitors, a site plan or trash cleanup. He said he didn’t think those were needed for what he planned as a simple protest rally of continuing criminalization of cannabis under some federal and even state laws despite Colorado’s voter-passed recreational marijuana legalization amendment.

Parks and Rec Executive Director Lauri Dannemiller wrote again to Chase on Feb. 27, making clear that those detailed plans would be a requirement.

Chase didn’t reply, so Dannemiller sent a new letter Tuesday denying his permit application. She sent another letter that day to Anton Marquez, who had applied for a 4/20 rally permit for April 20 after Chase but initially was denied. The holiday for pot enthusiasts is on a Monday this year.

Gov. John Hickenlooper delivers his fifth State of the State address in January to Colorado lawmakers. (Photo By Brent Lewis/The Denver Post)

A new poll from Quinnipiac University show voters approve of the job Gov. John Hickenlooper is doing, are lukewarm about their two U.S. senators and are OK with legalizing marijuana, although most of them don’t light up.

Colorado voters approve 53 percent to 37 percent the job Hickenlooper is doing, compared to a 48-46 percent approval rating in a July 16, 2014, Quinnipiac poll. And voters say 58 percent to 31 percent that they are optimistic about the next four years with Hickenlooper as governor. The Democrat beat Republican Bob Beauprez by 3 percentage points in November.

“Colorado voters are as happy with ‘Hick’ as they were before an ugly reelection campaign,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll.

A bill before the Colorado legislature would require medical marijuana caregivers to register and get licenses from the state. (File photo by Kathryn Scott Osler/ The Denver Post)

It can’t be often that a chamber of commerce calls for more regulations, but that happened Tuesday when the Colorado Cannibas Chamber of Commerce threw its weight behind legislation to clamp down on people growing medical marijuana.

Senate Bill 14 — sponsored by Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, and Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont — would require marijuana caregivers to register and get a license from the state. That would help law enforcement know who is a growing only the amount authorized for the number of patients they have and who’s breaking the law. The bill also would require caregivers to tell their patients of possible contaminants, so the users have informed consent on what they’re using.

“Our caregivers system is being abused across Colorado as a means of avoiding proper licenses or abiding by the same regulations as the rest of the cannabis industry,” Tyler Henson, the president of the chamber, said in a statement.

Dr. Larry Wolk, Colorado’s chief medical officer and executive director of the Department of Public Health and Environment, talks to a legislative committee Tuesday about the health effects of marijuana. (Photo by Joey Bunch/The Denver Post).

The Colorado House’s Health, Insurance and Environment Committee was handed what was called “two major reports” on marijuana that totaled 359 pages Tuesday. But in the reports there seemed to be little that was surprising or new, as they were being outlined by leaders of the state health and revenue departments during in the two-hour hearing.

Dr. Larry Wolk, chief medical officer and executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said a 13-member advisory committee reviewed existing scientific literature on the health effects of using pot as the backbone of the department’s report.

A hearing portended fireworks Tuesday afternoon in the Senate Finance Committee. Chairman Tim Neville, R-Littleton, started the two-hour discussion of regulating licenses for growers, sellers and vendors by calling medical marijuana “the granddaddy of them all” and “everyone’s favorite” topic.

What is at stake as legislators this session re-examine the rules is how the business of medical marijuana continues independently of its recreational, heavily taxed counterpart. Legislative changes this session could strengthen or weaken requirements on the businesses and employees who get the pot all the way from the seeds to the patient.

In the end, however, only one of the 15 recommendations presented by senior policy analyst Brian Tobias of the Department of Regulatory Agencies got a yes or a no: Senators agreed that the regulatory program should be extended to 2019. Failing to do that much wouldn’t have made medical pot go away, but it would have made it unregulated.

Here is your first look at “Rocky Mountain Heist,” the movie about how the political right thinks the political left took control of Colorado. The documentary will be available on TV in a matter of days, and a website for it, www.rockymountainheist.com, went live this afternoon.

Citizens United, the conservative group that brought the landmark campaign finance case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, won the right to put out the movie before the Nov. 4 election without disclosing its financial backers from a federal appeals court in Denver this week. The Virginia-based non-profit successfully argued it deserved the same protections as other media sources and shouldn’t have to adhere to state campaign finance rules on electioneering.

The trailer gives a glimpse of a lot of familiar conservative faces from Colorado politics: former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, a two-time candidate for governor; Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who’s running for Congress this year; Jon Caldara, the president of the Independence Institute; and Laura Carno, a Republican strategist and founder of the local nonprofit I Am Created Equal.

Wednesday evening at Shotgun Willie;s strip club in Glendale, a video featuring Wyclef Jean and independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunafon debuted. The best part is the rap stylings of Dunafon against the politics around pot prohibition.

The song, “The Trap,” according to Dunafon’s campaign, is “a metaphor, amplifying the misguided fear-mongering of John Hickenlooper’s now infamous ‘Don’t be a Lab Rat’ ad campaign” against teen pot use in July.

The other Cory — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, not Congressman Cory Gardner of Colorado who wants to unseat Sen. Mark Udall — implored Coloradans on Saturday to make the effort to ensure Udall wins his re-election bid.

Booker described Gardner as a “wingnut” and said the reason the country is interested in Udall’s race is because “so goes Colorado in November, so goes America.”

“Your Sen. Udall is relentless,” Booker said, but noted, “This election will not be determined on his work ethic. It will be determined on ours.”

Gardner’s campaign in response referred to Booker as an out-of-state bully.

Democrats are more likely to show up in presidential elections, but skip the others — something the left in Colorado wants to make sure doesn’t happen.

Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana has left cities navigating mostly uncharted waters when it comes to regulation, enforcement and cash-heavy tax collections. Now Denver is bringing together high-level officials from far-flung agencies — ranging from public safety to budgeting to children’s affairs — to keep up with the new reality.

The new Marijuana Advisory Council met for the first time this week and will get together monthly.

Led by Ashley Kilroy, Mayor Michael Hancock’s executive director for marijuana policy, the council’s 17 members “will make policy recommendations regarding marijuana goals, objectives and priorities to the mayor,” Kilroy said. It also gives agency heads and other officials a regular forum to discuss challenges facing the city as they crop up, she said.

One likely topic: How to spend tax revenue from cannabis sales that amounted to more than $700,000 in January alone.

Because marijuana is still considered illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act, many large commercial banks are wary about dealing with the licensed businesses. As a result, many of the retail shops operate in cash only — something that poses considerable danger to the stores and their employees, the letter said.

“A cash-only system may make it more difficult for the state and federal government to regulate and audit these facilities,” the letter said. “Finally, without access to the banking system, it may become easier for retail stores to avoid sales tax collections, which would diminish funding for marijuana enforcement activites and Colorado school construction.”

(All pot revenue generated by taxes will go to the Colorado Public School Capital Construction Assistance Fund.)

Lynn Bartels thinks politics is like sports but without the big salaries and protective cups. The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog has named her one of Colorado's best political reporters and tweeters.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.